This is a printable version of Machine with Concrete. The sculpture is a series of twelve 1:50 worm gears, with each gear reducing 1/50th of the previous gear. With 12 gears, the final gear ratio is a mind boggling 244,140,625,000,000,000,000:1 (244.14 quintillion to 1). With the first gear spinning at 200RPM it would take over 2 TRILLION years for a single revolution at the end of the machine, so the final drive shaft can be embedded in concrete or plaster.

6 Responses:

Machine with Concrete is one of my favorite Arthur Ganson works; it's on exhibit at the MIT Museum. Other great ones are Machine with Oil (possibly not work safe for young robots), and My Little Violin (not work safe for violins or feathers)

It's very cool that copies of this work can now be 3-D printed, but I am not sure how Mr. Ganson feels about it. Heck, I'm not even sure how I feel about it.